Re: Jig of Life

[harvard!topaz!jerpc.PE.UUCP]

> Nobody else I have
> talked to has gotten the meaning of "Jig Of Life" even close to right,

But, you know Kate Bush always gives the "wrong" interpretation
of her lyrics, just to lead people off track.

> But much great poetry is very ambiguous, including much of Kate's.

Fie!

> Ambiguity is a *very* important tool in poetry because it allows you to
> paint a whole splattering of different meanings with one set of words.
> This is not the same as being undecipherable, but a poem like this may
> have several or many different meanings rather than just one.

But if the poem is ambiguous, then it should still be consistent
across the several interpretations the ambiguity allows.  This
is true of e.e.cummings' example which you gave; once you apply
either interpretation, the rest of the poem still makes sense. 
There are no "loose ends" that apply to only one interpretation
or the other.

It's strange, but the *first* time I heard the song, I had a
distinctly different interpretation of it than when I listened
to it several times later.  Initially, it struck me as a
somewhat angry song about a woman who has been involved,
unknowingly, in an "extramarital affair", who discovers this,
and suddenly feels insignificant with respect to this other
person.  Now, however, I have to think hard to remember this.

Since that time, I have decided that it is about the
Hebrew notion of immortality, that one (or at least one's name,
which tended to be endowed with special powers: notice how when
Jacob (or was it Joseph) wrestled with the angel until the
breaking of the day, one of them eventually asks the other one
what his name is, and finding this represents a sort of conquest
over the other person.  (I've forgotten who said what.)) is
perpetuated through one's offspring.

This song starts out with the narrator looking in the mirror and
seeing there the face of her mother; thus "this is the place
where the crossroads meet"; and the narrator disappears from the
picture, and there is the mother, and her offspring... which
don't yet exist!  "For what is the sound of one hand clapping?",
as the Koan says.  Thus the narrator, looking in the mirror,
looks into the future, and realizes that this part of her life,
which is the part of her life belonging to the old Lady in the
mirror, and to her nonexistent children, and thus this
immortality, do not yet exist; and the face in the mirror
admonishes her.

--------

Is the yo-yo in "cloudbusting" another factual error on the part
of Kate Bush?


> 	you shall above all things be glad and young.
> 	For if you're young, whatever life you wear
> 
> 	it will become you; and if you are glad
> 	whatever's living will yourself become.

e.e.cummings understood what Maslow was talking about.

> 
> 		"Where on your palm is my little line
> 		 When you're written in mine
> 		 As an old memory"
> 
> 		 Doug
> 

But... but... it says in the Bible that you shouldn't consort
with necromancers, sorcerers, and their kind!  Aren't palm
readers sort of that way?  Maybe this means Kate Bush really is
a witch after all!!